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I Thought Up The Oddest Name
Stalking Throckmorton follows the great-grandson of a mysterious man as he tries to find the hidden family assets hidden beneath a demolished brewery. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
My maternal great-grandfather and grandfather built and owned a brewery in Bangor, WI, a small town in west-central Wisconsin. It shifted to a canning factory with Prohibition and went bust in 1935 weeks after my grandfather died. The building was used as a feed mill when I was in high school and had enough space left over to raise steers on the third floor and store boats on the North end. Tunnels and caverns built from 1862 to 1864 allowed them to brew lager beer all year long and deliver it to all the bars in town without being exposed to winter weather.
Did you create an outline for the characters in the story before you started writing or did the characters’ personalities grow organically as you were writing?
I created an outline for the first half of the book. A couple of the early chapters were dropped. Some of the characters were drawn from relatives who lived in town, a few others were inspired by people I’ve met.
To name the title character, I thought up the oddest name I could think of. You can imagine my surprise when my spellchecker corrected my spelling. Lord Throckmorton was executed during the reign of Elizabeth I in England after he failed in an attempt to assassinate her. Since then, I’ve learned of a couple people by that name in NE.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
My youngest son had Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (A.L.L.) when he was 32. He had less than a 50/50 chance of surviving. He’s doing well now, but that was a wrenching period in our lives. Nixon passed a law that funds treatment for A.L.L., but I believe that is the only type of lymphoma that is covered. The cost of treating cancers can be horrendous without good insurance.
What is the next book in the Throckmorton series about that you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book is tentatively named “Last Gasp.” Nancy and Throckmorton discover the body of one of his elderly clients in the client’s home. There is no clear cause of death and the sheriff, in a tough re-election campaign, doesn’t want to probe too deeply. It would be easier to call it “natural causes” rather than take the risk it was murder and not be able to quickly solve it.
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A lawyer hands Throckmorton an 82-year-old letter that claims his dying great-grandfather Otto Kessler stashed the family assets in an office under his brewery. Those assets could be worth $50 million or nothing in today’s market. The village has demolished the brewery and buried the office.
Murder victims are found in homes once owned by the Kessler’s. The crooked village mayor and a con man learn of Otto’s letter and force Throckmorton to make them partners. An inept crew slows the excavation to the office, and security cameras show the killer has visited the dig. Once in the office, the men find stock certificates in companies that went bankrupt between 1950 and 1990. His partners quit. Throckmorton finds another treasure in the office, but not the one Otto put there. To keep it, he must face the killer in the dark.
Stalking Throckmorton
Stalking Throckmorton by Gary F. Jones is the story of Chris Throckmorton, an accountant in the town of Rockburg, who is struggling to find a way to finance an experimental treatment for his son’s leukemia. One day he gets a letter from his ancestor Otto Kessler, who has left the remaining Kesslers in Rockburg assets hidden in a safe in an office in a tunnel beneath the brewery. The only problem was that the brewery was demolished, and the tunnels were sealed. To find it, Chris must navigate the intricacies of this small town’s residents. Unfortunately, Chris soon learns there’s another player in this hunt, a long-lost relative, Carl Kessler, who is willing to kill to get a particular object from those assets.
This was a fun read. From the get-go, this treasure hunt was set into motion and held onto you until the very end. I loved this small town with its quirky characters; they were vibrant and really added flavor to this story. There was great humor that I found ridiculous at times, and I enjoyed that. The romance I feared at first was out of place, and the story soon fused beautifully with it. Although I like it wasn’t this perfect romance either, it had embarrassing moments and times of imperfectness that made it golden. The ending was humorously perfect. It was a good laugh, so brilliantly done.
One part of the novel did confuse me; it reads like Carl goes back and forth between knowing and not knowing about Chris. I felt like we needed a clearer introduction to the fact Carl knows of Chris. Nevertheless, if you love a good treasure race in the ordinary spaces of life, I highly recommend this book.
Stalking Throckmorton is a humorous and thrilling mystery novel with a treasure hunt and a bit of romance. This is the perfect book to sit down with and unwind after a long day if you want to escape into a realistic adventure where the untold treasure may or may not be everything you dream of.
Pages: 340 | ASIN : B09YVJSCWG
LITERARY TITAN 